Internationally acclaimed lessons for thoroughness, innovation, and ease of understanding!

Mel Bay's Modern Guitar Method Grade 1 is the world's premier guitar instruction course. The lessons are time tested and have proven success in building the technical proficiency needed to master any style of music. Written in standard notation only to improve sight-reading ability.

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Internationally acclaimed

Time-tested

Builds technical proficiency

It's worked for many thousands of others, it can work for you. Order now.

The book is somewhat helpful, but is lacking in detailed descriptions. It is almost like those directions you get from Target furniture that have just a picture of what to do with no words..just a drawing of a bunch of nuts and bolts flying in mid air towards particle boards. I felt like that with this book. I needed more explanation than I was getting...maybe because I have zero experience reading music.

Overall I found it confusing and the song examples are quite dated. I didn't mind the vintage nature of the learnable songs, but many younger players might.

Major Successes of the Book:1. You develop your eye-hand and brain-hand connections very thoroughly early on. You will find that some of the musical passages will come to you without having to think about them very much. The incremental approach in this regard puts you in good shape from the very beginning.2. You learn how to read music. You will not be restricted to tablature when you try to learn something new. You learn the notes on one string at a time, so this takes the intimidation out of learning to read music. I am a physicist, so since I think in terms or frequency, wavelength, etc., I find musical notation to be a better visual representation of what I am trying to learn or do.Huge Caveat: you really need the help of a human being, to demonstrate some of the musical passages. I work with an intructor who has been teaching guitar since before dirt, and he swears by this book.Final Note: you will be startled at how quickly your skills develop. The pace is a little challenging, but the approach is just right.

This is an awesome book. It starts with really simple stuff and gets harder. I started playing for like 2 weeks before I started using this book. I worked with other books and they don't work 1/2 as well as this. I started really playing well with this book. You really learn a lot and it covers a lot. If you take enough time on this book, you end up playing well. The only downside is that you have to take a lot of time with this book, if you're a beginner. I would recommend this to all beginners.